ABSTRACT
The imagined polarity between country and city or town and city no longer dominates the American scene. While cities are "fighting back" against suburbs, the transformation of suburban areas is being accompanied by a reinterpretation of life as it is lived there. For more civic-minded souls, a suburban community also represented a reasonably good way to enter into the political process; something that was much more difficult to effect within the crowded city wards. When conceived in such terms, suburbanization represents to inveterate lovers of the city a genuine threat to urban values—a threat even to the nation. Anyone who has taught a course or read through available textbooks in urban sociology must know that "hodge-podge" is an accurate description of urban theory, at least those portions of it that deal with social relations in the city.
